The Friant post office opened in 1910, the earliest record of the town by name. Two smaller post offices, Hamptonville (1881) and Pollasky (1891), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
2020 census: 446116 years
Founding year: the first Friant post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
What stands out about Friant’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The place was first called Converse Ferry for Charles Converse, who established a ferry across the San Joaquin River in 1852. It was renamed Jones Ferry for J.R. Jones, a local merchant. The post office came in 1881 and named the place Hamptonville, after William R. Hampton, its first postmaster. The Southern Pacific Railroad arrived in 1891 and named the place Pollasky for Marcus Pollasky, a railroad official. In the 1920s the place was renamed for Thomas Friant, a lumber company executive.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikipedia, the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock) and the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
